Friday, 25 February 2011

Can You Feel It?

So often mentioned as South Africa's greatest soul jazz band The Drive have never had a proper re-issue or taken their proper place in the ongoing unfolding and retelling of South Africa's musical past and future. Maybe our efforts here at Electric Jive can tip the balance in favour of The Drive. Certainly we can feel it!

The band was started by Henry Sithole and Bunny Luthuli in 1971. As Matt over at Matsuli put it a few years back "The Drive represented an articulate black urban vision of a future at odds with Apartheid's engineers." Over the course of their six years of existence they travelled the length and breadth of Southern Africa playing festivals and what venues were still available. Their recorded output is to the best of our knowledge a total of eight LPs. There was a poorly remastered attempt at a reissue on a budget around ten years ago but it sunk into the budget racks.

I am desperately looking for this and other recordings by The Drive for my radio show on TransAfrica Radio (DSTv Audio 172). If you have any of these albums and are willing to part with them or make copies available to me for my show please contact me.Etienne Shardlow (+27 82 805 3981)

Etienne, there were some legit CD reissues of Drive songs a few years back. Unfortunately the original LPs have never been treated with the respect they deserve and have not seen the light of day in an proper release. You will need to spend big money on eBay to get hold of the originals. But if you hold on their LP Coming to the End of this is scheduled for shared at ej in the next 6 weeks.